Community Residential Care for the Disabled

Most parents can foresee the time when their children will emerge from their protective care and become self-sustaining, independent adults. Their tenure as the primary provider for their children’s needs will come to an end. Parents of the developmentally disabled, however, are parents for life.

My son is developmentally disabled and currently lives at the Jay Nolan Center, a residential care facility. He has learned more at the Jay Nolan Center in one year than he did during his 21 years at Camarillo State Hospital, where, for most of those years, his only “program” consisted of hundreds of milligrams of drugs administered daily. He now lives happily without drugs, continuing to learn new skills and appropriate behavior patterns.

Your article (Aug. 25) tells of the severe behavior of some of our Jay Nolan Center clients and the high costs of their program. Yet, it failed to mention that the only alternative to our program is the state hospital, which costs the state a great deal more than it is willing to spend for community care.

If the residential care facilities close their doors due to insufficient funding and the developmentally disabled return to the state hospital system, then Californians will end up paying far more for vastly inferior care.

A few months ago I shared my concerns with a team of legislators and professionals from Sweden who were here to see our community care programs. One man responded, “I can’t relate to what you are telling me. I’ve been a conservative legislator on the committee for the disabled for 15 years. These people are such a small percentage of our population that anything I ask for them I get.”

Yes, I am a parent for life. Not for my own life but for the life of my child. What will happen when I am no longer around to continue the struggle? Who will speak for the interests of my severely disabled child and see that his most fundamental rights are not abused?

Someone must deliver the message to our legislators that “all the people” includes this minute percentage of our population.

ARLENE J. PASTER

Woodland Hills